November 2006 Archives

The LE version of the Negima! manga vol. 16 was here when I got home from work yesterday and the extras included are fairly cool, and are all from the new Negima!? anime and manga. First off is Asuna's Armour Card (I'm referring to these as Neo Pactio cards to distinguish from the old Pactio cards) which unfortunately (from my point of view) has Armour 'misspelt' the American way as 'Armor'. I now have two of these (scans here) including the Ku-Fei card that came with the Spring Special DVD. Next is a Negima!? anime "starter pack" booklet which explains the new card system and layout and gives the character designs for most of the new cards which are split into "Armor" cards and "Charta Figura" (cosplay) cards along with a messed up card for each character (like the original failed pactios these have chibi designs but now all wearing a different animal costume). Some of the card designs are kept secret, e.g. they don't show the design for Eva's armour card or Chachamaru's cosplay card. The third extra is a little special: it's a reproduction of the ADR script for the first episode of the new anime with signatures, doodles and little messages from all the cast scattered throughout (the highlight being Eva's).

PS, the morse code on the bottom of the card is the character's first name and the Seiyuu's name in morse katakana

Well, I watched this last night and the DVD itself arrived this morning. Points of interest:
Despite being based on a story from the original manga, it has the question mark from the neo manga and 2nd anime.
The rough storyline is taken direct from the manga but been tweaked; the reason for Negi and Asuna breaking up has been simplified (presumably as they wanted to contentrate on the resort itself as a stand alone episode and couldn't fit in library island and the dragon etc or simply rely on people having read the manga), more time was spent showing what the secondary characters are doing at the resort, and the action was amped up with the skydive sequence.
They really have amped the fanservice for this OVA too.
Setsuna really does spend the whole time staring at Konoka's butt.
Konoka keeps doing Ichijo-san impressions.
Again this wierd obsession with Chupacabra.
I keep seeing characters in the background and not being able to put a name to them - not used to the new character designs yet (there seem to be two Ako's for example and I'm not sure which is the real Ako and who the other one really is)
There are no on-disc extras, but there is a booklet with some nice illustrations (and a couple of pages on Chupacabra..), a neo pactio armour card for Ku-Fei (like the title related to the new series rather than the actal OVA), and a second DVD with footage from the Spring live event.